During the 2024-2025 academic year, a cohort of Hull-House Fellows from across the University of Illinois Chicago participated in an intensive workshop and year-long seminar series to create new and revised courses that integrate the museum into classroom teaching. Drawing on the museum’s collections, exhibitions, and the expertise of museum staff, Fellows developed courses in a range of disciplines: history, literature, urban studies, education, art, social justice, and first-year writing.

The syllabi featured here reflect Hull-House’s long tradition of interdisciplinary learning and community engagement. They invite educators and students to examine questions of immigration, labor, democracy, public life, race, gender, education, and the arts through engagement with primary sources and place-based learning. Inspired by Jane Addams’s belief that education should connect scholarship with lived experience, these courses encourage students to think critically about the past while engaging with the challenges of the present.